Alf Lüdtke

His article describes the idea that state violence under the feudal system was necessary to create control amongst the Prussian working class in order to prepare them for the different structures of capitalist society.

In 1999 Alf Lüdtke and Hans Medick founded the Arbeitsstelle für Historische Anthropologie ('(off-site)-Departement of Historical Anthropology') of the Max Planck Institute for History at the University of Erfurt.

From November 2008 to August 2013 he did seminars and workshops in South Korea as part of the "World Class University" program of the Korean National Research Foundation.

Especially through his research on the life worlds of industrial workers and so-called "ordinary" people, he gave impetuses to German and international historical science.

His final research projects were: Blockings and Passages: the Grenzübergangsstellen [border checkpoints] of the GDR, war as work, and the recent state of transnational historiography.